


i will not ask you where you came from

by supinetothestars



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Origins SMP - Fandom, Powers SMP, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Avian Tommyinnit (Video Blogging RPF), Cottagecore, Disordered Eating, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hybrid AU, Hybrid Niki | Nihachu, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Malnourishment, Modded AU, Origins SMP, Piglin Hybrid Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF), Powers SMP - Freeform, Winged Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-19 08:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29872221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supinetothestars/pseuds/supinetothestars
Summary: By the time a week passes, Techno's got Philza giving him an amused, bewildered look from across the outdoor potato bin and saying “Maybe you’ve just got raccoons in your basement, Techno.”“I do not have raccoons,” Techno informs him. This is a fact of which he is entirely certain. He knows how raccoons act and while they’re smart little fuckers, they’re not quite smart enough to close the oven after they leave.Phil just shrugs. “I dunno, mate. I mean, it’s not any of mine. We’re all plenty well-fed down by the lake - speaking of which, come down for a visit sometime. It’s been a week or two, be a neighbor - Niki’s been asking when I’ll introduce you.”“Niki?” Techno asks, wondering if this Niki character could be the one filching all his crops.__or: technoblade, a famous warrior only recently retired, takes to farming potatoes in a cottage near philza's lake neighborhood. this arrangement goes well up until he finds tommy, a frightened and malnourished avian hybrid, hiding under his basement and filching his potatoes.
Relationships: Technoblade & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 43
Kudos: 321





	1. Chapter 1

Techno is twenty years and a few more he can’t remember when he realizes he’s getting tired. It’s a realization long in the making, slow in the reaching, an old-trodden road he only now recognizes he’s been following; that familiar feeling of weariness in his bones, the constant strained anticipation that comes with years of enduring the same old battle-time injuries.

“You know, I think I’m getting tired of all this, Phil,” Techno says one chilly spring morning, after the two of them have finished raiding a pillager outpost and are looking out at the destruction. He’s sitting on the structure's utmost story, legs hanging over the edge, and he can feel fresh blood already drying on his sharpened nails. 

Phil stands somewhere behind him, rummaging through his pack, but at Techno’s words the rustling stops abruptly. 

“Getting a bit old for the old wear-and-tear, huh, mate?” He asks, and below the note of amusement is a genuine kind of curiosity. A real question. 

Phil’s been retired for years. His  _ Angel of Death _ days are behind him; his weapons are shelved and stored. Last Techno heard he’d gotten a place holed out down south and had settled down with a few other hybrids. Somewhere warm, Phil’d said; somewhere with a lake. Only for Techno does Phil still do this, still draw his axes from the cabinet where they’re locked and take flight to less peaceful horizons. 

He’s here now at Techno’s request - supposedly, to aid in cleaning out a particularly troublesome pillager outpost. (In reality, Techno had just wanted to see him. He hadn’t known how to ask.)

“Maybe I am,” Techno responds, and hears Philza’s boots step nearer.

“Come down south with me,” the man suggests, suddenly and with an odd kind of urgency. “I think you’d like it. My son’s friends are an odd sort of lot, but a good one.”

Techno allows himself a few moments to entertain the notion. A thought experiment, if he will; a hypothesis he never intends to test. Maybe he  _ would _ like it. Maybe they really  _ are _ a good lot. He’s never lived around a lake; most ones in the northern wastes are cold-weathered and thick with frozen ice.

Once the minute of allotted contemplation is done and up, he lets the thought experiment slip away; he smirks; he gives a dismissive kind of laugh. “Not today, Philza,” he says. “I am the blood god, after all. Busy man. Voices to feed and people to see.”

And that’s the end of that.

___

But that’s not the end of that, not really. Not when a month later finds Techno wrapped up in a battle he’d never intended to fight, somewhere in the northern tundra of a country he’s forgotten, trapped in a war of unworthy men’s creation. He takes to the battlefield because there is nowhere else to go, not with the hordes enemies skulking about with personal vendettas against the  _ blood god _ . There are always shadows on his tail, now, in the great northern escapes. They are always nipping at his heels.

But the war gets to be one thing too much and Techno goes down in the middle of a fight. In the midst of a battle makes a misstep and the war itself pounces; dozens of soldiers converging on a singular irregularity. Spotting the weakness and with it the opportunity.

Techno barely makes it out alive. His ribs are cracked and his nose is bloodied and something shivery and painful slides its way down his arm whenever he dares to move a finger. He travels south on foot and later on horseback and later on foot again, and he finds Philza’s little neighborhood inlet with difficulty, but also with the map that Philza’d given him to tuck away in a knapsack pocket for future use. 

Techno shows up at Phil’s doorstep in the dead of night with crickets chirping in the bushes around him and the soft rushing of the lake behind him and blood on his face. 

This time, when Phil invites him to stay, he accepts.

___

They build him a house. Just him and Phil, far enough away from the lake that at Techno’s request Phil is able to shepherd away any visitors - he’s still sore and his ribs are still healing and the idea of being goggled at by a crew of mob hybrids he’s never met makes something twist uneasily in his stomach. So they build it with just the two of them, no visitors but the trees and the sky and a horse Techno tames and names Carl.

It’s a nice enough little house. Made mostly of spruce from a nearby forest, but not so cabin-like as to be out of place in the warm weather. There’s a stove and a porch and a double set of doors that have bars on them, so that on the hot days Techno can open one up and let the breeze in. Phil builds a little bee farm off to the side, for some reason, and they put big windows in the house’s second story to let in the light.

Techno’s most interested in the fields. He likes farming much more, he’s decided, when it’s not accompanied by the frostbitten noses and chilled fingers of the northern wastelands. Here the outdoors are pleasant, if sometimes uncomfortably warm, and after enduring the burning heat of the nether through his childhood Techno can barely feel the sun’s sting.

So he builds a farm. Fixes together logs of oak into a fence and tills the soil and draws buckets of water from the river to irrigate the land. He starts with just a few odd potatoes and carrots lent by Philza’s charitable hand and grows his collection to four, to eight, to twenty, to hundreds.

A week passes. Then two. Techno continues to till the fields.

____

Things are going well up until Techno notices his potatoes are going missing.   
  


For a man such as Techno, these are a difficult thing to misplace. He’s amassed a fair amount of them, piled in rickety old bins in his basement and roasting in pots over his fireplace. He’s got a chest of the ones that come up poisonous on a shelf near where he keeps the spare armor. He’s got rows and rows and rows of them sprouting from freshly-tilled soil out back of the cottage, flourishing in the summer light with an eagerness that never would have taken further north - where the air was chillier and the sunlight always seemed to carry a ice-chilled sting.

He likes it better here, where the sun is warm and the breeze is light around the lake, and even as his house is comfortably sheltered behind a private grove of trees. He’s some way away from the inlet. but he can still hear the waves on quiet days and sometimes glimpse a neighbor or two on the horizon. (He’s come to recognize a few of them, by now, even as they mind their business and he minds his. There’s a tall one with the glinting eyes of an enderman, always flickering in and out of space. He’s seen so briefly Techno only ever recognizes him by the trailing of ender particles in his wake - barely staying still long enough to catch a glimpse. There’s a shorter one with thick purple chunks of armor that float about him in the air, usually seen running in the wake of that familiar trail of end particles. There are others, but they rarely stay still long enough to glimpse.)

Having neighbors is a disorienting experience, different than Techno’s usual - typically when he finds shelter,it’s in briefly visited inns by the wayside of his most recent journey, or bunkers dug underground and filled with weapons or carefully stored supplies.

So it’s a change - but one that Techno tolerates. He tolerates the distant sound of laughter that echoes through the trees, and the glimpses of a green fin and tail that sometimes flicker through the water of the river by his fields, and he tolerates Phil, of course, when Phil comes by to visit and share a baked potato and sensibly chuckle over his own stories about the goings-on of the neighbors Techno doesn’t intend to meet. 

The one thing Techno can’t tolerate is someone stealing his potatoes. And that must be what’s happening, because there are empty holes dug in his carrot fields by clumsy, visibly imprinted hands and the baked goods in his oven vanish whenever he leaves for more than a few minutes and the bins of produce under his house always have a latch or two undone, like someone’s been opening the chests and then squirreling out of sight too quickly to bother properly closing them. A day of this leaves him frustrated and a few of them leave him disoriented and by the time a week passes, he’s got Philza giving him an amused, bewildered look from across the outdoor potato bin and saying “Maybe you’ve just got raccoons in your basement, Techno.”

“I do not have raccoons,” Techno informs him. This is a fact of which he is entirely certain. He knows how raccoons act and while they’re smart little fuckers, they’re not quite smart enough to close the oven after they leave.

Phil just shrugs. “I dunno, mate. I mean, it’s not any of mine. We’re all plenty well-fed down by the lake - speaking of which, come down for a visit sometime. It’s been a week or two, be a neighbor - Niki’s been asking when I’ll introduce you.”

“Niki?” Techno asks, wondering if this Niki character could be the one filching all his crops.

Phil must recognize the glint in his eye, because he shakes his head. “She’s a mer-hybrid, Tech. Can only live underwater. Doesn’t have the stomach for potatoes, I don’t think.”

Techno recalls that glint of green-scaled fin and tail he’d glimpsed in the river and nods.

“I gotta get going, now, promised Tubbo I’d help him make a bee farm,” is all Phil says, before their greetings are exchanged and his departure hastily made. Techno is left to stand at the side of the potato garden, staring out over freshly tilled dirt and green leaves poking up from the ground. There are still messy little spaces at the edges of the fields, finger-shaped notches dug into the soil.

There’s something uneasy about the sight of it; not just the freshly-dug soil, but the farm laid out before him and the picture-perfect cottage with the bee farm off the side and the way that Techno’s only wearing boots and a chainmail chestplate - horribly exposed, horribly underprepared, and they’re better clothes to farm in but he still feels his back itching as if waiting for the moment he turns his back the second too long. His ribs still ache from battle he’d lost up north and he hasn’t touched his weapons since he got here, skirting around their chest on his shelf as if frightened they’ll prove infectious. 

Techno gives a frustrated huff and stomps back inside.

___

In the end, he finds Philza was right about his basement. There aren’t any raccoons, no rodents laying in wait beneath his cupboards, but he ventures into the space below his house a few days later that week to find some bone meal he’d misplaced and notices a broad yellow-gold feather sitting by his surplus produce chest. 

He leans over to pick it up and straightens, holding it to the light of the lanterns above him. It has the shape of a chicken feather, but it’s much broader - longer than Techno’s entire hand - and it spreads from a white center to blushing rose-gold, almost ruddy tips. He’s never seen any bird with that kind of plumage.

Techno drops his hand by his side, feather still clutched therein, and glances around his basement again. He steps nearer the opposite wall - but his movements are slower, now, more calculated; his hand subconsciously comes to rest by his belt, only to be met by open air where the hilt of a sword used to be. He drops it limply by his side and tries not to let its emptiness brother him.

There are no more feathers left floating about the spruce-plank floors. But as Techno steps forward, he feels the wood creak beneath him - giving way with a hollow sort of groan - and he stills abruptly, standing motionless as he stares at the wood below his feet.

It looks normal. It looks perfectly in-place. But he lifts one iron-plated leather boot and kicks at it, lightly, and he hears it again: a hollow, empty tone. Different from the sound of the surrounding floorboards.

Techno backs up abruptly and moves to the barrel on the shelf by the door. There are weapons, there, hastily shoved into storage once he and Phil’d cleared out a basement space. He stands over it, fingers brushing over each weapon in turn - an enchanted golden sword, a thickly-carved longbow, a dagger with worn-out edges - and finally he grabs a netherite axe that feels as familiar as it does unsettling when he lifts it from the barrel and slides it into place at his belt before wheeling back around, all in one smooth movement.

It doesn’t take him long to find the carved-out spaces around the edges of the floorboard trapdoor. Whoever had made it had been trying their best to keep it out of notice, but there are shakily carved edges here and there and bits of wood missing from there splinters must have chipped off in the cutting of the wood. Below the wood, there should be stone; instead Techno finds himself peering down a darkened hollow space, the familiar rungs of a ladder barely visible through the shadows.

There is something living in Techno’s basement. Something desperate enough to mine through stone into some sort of cave beneath and cut through his floorboards and go digging through his fields for carrots to eat. Something that leaves rose-gold not-quite-chicken feathers in its wake and is smart enough to hide its tracks but not enough to close all the locks on the chests from which it steals.

Something is drumming in Technoblade’s chest. He unclips the axe at his side, places his foot on the ladder, and slowly makes his descent; the darkness swallows him whole. There is no light at the bottom of the tunnel but for the glimpse of lantern-light from the opening above the ladder.

Techno grasps the axe in one hand and turns to face the cave before him. It’s claustrophobic, dank and smelling of moldy rock, and he shifts his feet farther apart in anticipation of a fight. He searches the darkness before him, eyes adjusting to the shadows.

His gaze settles on a faded blue pair of eyes, blinking from the darkness like an owl’s. Framing them, a pair of rose-gold feather wings, mantled in anticipation of a fight. Dusty boots braced against the floor. Fists curled in and readied. 

A child, Techno realizes. The creature in Techno’s basement is a child.

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> leave comments or else :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The child is shaking. That’s the first thing Techno notices, because the way he does it is so terribly distracting - rattling like pennies in a can.

The child is shaking. That’s the first thing Techno notices, because the way he does it is so terribly distracting - rattling like pennies in a can. It’s visible in the chattering of his jaw and the tremor in his hands and unsteadiness to his stance, even as he stands - hands up, arms braced - by the opposite wall of the cave. His shape is muffled by darkness, but Techno makes out a ratty old fur coat that goes down nearly to his knees and the silhouettes of feathers brushing the ground by his feet.

A hybrid, Techno realizes. But not one of Phil’s. _ ‘We’re all plenty well-fed,’ _ Phil had said, and the boy before Techno now is too rattly in his bones, shivering too hard in the cold and the mold and the stifling cave air, to fit with that kind of description.

The boy speaks first. “You’re a pig,” is what he chooses to say, of all the things he could have done; “You’re a fuckin pig, bitch! Get away from me.” 

He sounds surprised, but he mostly sounds afraid.

“You’re in my basement,” Techno observes. His hand is still rested on his axe, but while he keeps it there for appearances purposes - one never knows which ratty bird-children in fur coats are liable to pull a knife and shank you - the urgency in its presence is gone. He knows just from the unsteadiness to this kid’s stance that all it would take to bowl him over would be a particularly strong breeze.

The child makes a snarling noise that sounds almost, but not quite human. “And what of it? My basement now, pig bitch. New landlord in town, I’ll need you out by nightfall-”

Techno steps up and rests his free hand on the boy’s forearm, stilling him - he’s met by a light scuffle of resistance as the boy’s free hand swats at him, but he stands his ground and the kid’s shoulders slump in surrender. The kid’s breathing is still heavy, and he’s doing that discomforting full-body rattle of fear, and the muted panic is visible in his eyes even as he quiets down and goes practically limp under Techno’s hold.

Techno ignores this and begins to lightly tug him towards the ladder. He’s not much help to anyone in this stifling, mold-smelling basement, after all. Better to talk it out in the cottage, where the lanterns keep the rooms well-lit and the corners aren’t dusted with recently-shed feathers.

The boy climbs the ladder without much resistance. (Techno gets a better glimpse of his wings and tail-feathers as he does, and rattles his brain for only a moment before he recognizes the patterns in the feather-tufts; he’s an avian hybrid, prone to light falls and vegetarianism.)

Once they both emerge into the golden lantern-light of the room above, Techno closes the trapdoor beneath them. For the first time, he gets a proper look at the kid before him. He’s skinny, all bones and edges, and the muted panic in his eyes hasn’t faded. His wings, sure enough, match the red-gold feathertip patterns Techno had found dusting across his floor. He’s got a broad-feathered tail poking out from beneath that ratty coat, and Techno glimpses feathers lining his ankle in the gap between his pant-legs and his boots. 

“There’s a lot to unpack here, kid,” Techno grunts, for lack of anything else to say.

“You’re a bitch,” the kid informs him, for only the third time that minute. His words are still half-snarls, but Techno’s heard enough frightened people overcompensating to last a lifetime. He knows the signs.

So Techno just hauls the kid behind him up the stairs, into the living room with the sunlit windows and the dirt beginning to line the uncleaned countertops, and parks him at the kitchen table. Sits him down. Steps back to stand across from him, arms folded, head tilted in thought.

He begins with an observation. “You’ve been stealing my potatoes.”

“Yes,” the kid agrees. “And what of it, pig-man? The fuck are you gonna do about it?” 

He doesn’t look like he wants to find out. 

Techno ignores him. “You’ve been living in a cave in my basement. I didn’t even know I had a cave beneath my basement,” he points out. He feels his shoulders slump, a little, at the thought; a hollowed-out danger-space beneath the house that’s meant to be a haven and he hadn’t even noticed till now. There’d been a whole entire child there, for whatever reason, and he hadn’t noticed till now. 

Techno knows what would’ve happened to inattentive soldiers in the wars up north. The axe at his belt suddenly feels heavier.

“I knew. I found it while I was looking for more po’a’oes,” the kid says, purposefully skewing the consonants on potatoes. He looks a little self-satisfied, and even as his eyes flick between Techno’s axe and Techno’s eyes he leans back in his chair a little, falls a little better into place, like he’s beginning to grow certain that Techno doesn’t intend to actually use the axe he carries on him.

Techno gives a long, steady breath out through his nose. “Kid,” he says. “Why the hell would you need po- okay. Just work with me here. Philza feeds you kids fine down at the lake, you’ve got fish and treehouses and I don’t understand the purpose of coming here just to skulk like a raccoon - gods above.”

Techno stops again. Starts over. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, pig-boy,” the child says. The answer comes so quickly it seems automatic, queued up, a gut reaction. His gaze flicks over to watch Techno carefully after he says it, shoulders stiffening just slightly. He’s testing for a reaction.

Techno just looks at the kid, and his shoulders slump again. “Tommy,” he says. “My name’s Tommy. What’s yours, big man?” 

“Technoblade,” Techno says, voice dry as a desert. He half expects some kind of reaction, recognition, the look of hushed awe that such a name would have greeted up north. A whisper of the blood god, a chanting of the blade - but Tommy doesn’t react. Of course he doesn’t. They’re much too far south for the wars of the northern tundra to have made the slightest bit of dent. 

“Tech-no-blade. Teeeeechnoblaaaade. Technoblade,” Tommy mutters to himself, sorting out the syllables in his mouth. “Stupid name, that is. Not half as good as Tommy.” 

Techno sighs. “Tell me why you were in my basement, Tommy.”

“Maybe I don’t want to, bitch boy. Maybe you need to rethink your whole theory here, about my basement, my potatoes, this and that - what if I say it was my basement, what then-”

Tommy just keeps talking. Techno watches him, sees the telltale signs of someone gearing up to go for a good long time. Tangents, he’s noticed, are a particular favorite of Tommy’s. Addressing the topic of why he’s living in a grown man’s basement, however, is not.

He decides to interrupt. “Question, Tommy,” he reminds, and tries to put that element of gravity in his tone - something magnetic, to pull Tommy back to the topic at hand. He can tell that if he gets loud, if he allows his temper to get the better of him, if he shows the slightest sign of aggression - Tommy will only react in turn. Get harder to handle. He has to be gentle, keep his tone soft if still strict.

It works. Tommy meets his eyes and cuts himself off mid-sentence, and even if he looks away to study the table as he replies, his response is still an answer.

“I was hungry,” he mutters, and for once his voice is quiet. 

“You were hungry,” Techno prompts.

“I, um.” Tommy’s hand comes up to scratch halfheartedly at the back of his neck. He continues to avoid eye-contact. “It’s a long story. I sort of recently - not recently, really - I got, er, displaced. From the place I used to live. Nasty deal, it was, all my fau-” he seems to choke, cut himself off, and takes a moment before he can restart. “I mean. No it wasn’t, it was - gods. I don’t know. I left a place I used to live and all the sudden I was a hybrid and I'd got wings ‘n shit, but I couldn’t eat meat,” he says. “made me sick. Just couldn’t keep the shit down.” 

“You’re an avian hybrid,” Techno deadpans. “Mandatory vegetarianism is kinda on the job description.” 

“Well, nobody really bothered to give me the job description, now, did they, big man?” Tommy fires back, and there’s a flash of something in his eyes. “I didn’t wake up one day and go ooh, what a wonderful day to sprout fuckin’ wings down my back that itch like shit and shed dust and feathers everywhere - the hell kind of fuckery would that be, I hate this shit-” 

Techno looks at Tommy’s wings and the way the feathers are all out of line and there’s dust already fallen onto the floor, and recalls the many hours Phil used to spend awake each night straightening out the feathers in his void-blue elytra wings and combing out the old ones and brushing out the dust. Tommy’s wings don’t like they’ve ever seen a proper preening. Just looking at them gives Techno’s shoulder blades an uncomfortable itch. 

“So you needed food,” Techno supplies, trying to route the conversation back on track. “You could have planted some. You could’ve asked me for some. I wouldn’t have given you any, but I might have given you Philza, and he would’ve lent you a carrot or two. Instead you decided to hide in my basement.” 

“I tried planting shit, bitch,” Tommy defends, glaring. “Didn’t work. Farming’s bullshit. Can never get it to work. And I don’t know who this Philza lad is but he sounds like a right rat bastard.” 

Techno sighs.

“I just wanted a place to stay and you had a place to stay so I hid in my basement so you couldn’t find me and up ‘n chop my wings off, big man,” Tommy finishes. He’s looking back at the table, now, and scuffing his muddy boots against the floor. “Your cottage seemed an alright spot. Didn’t figure you’d mind. Didn’t figure you’d notice, really.” 

“You didn’t figure I'd notice an entire child hiding inside my house,” Techno begins, and finds his voice raising somewhat against his will - he cuts himself off, breathes, averts his eyes to stare at the ceiling in prayer to whatever gods might take pity.

Tommy’s gone all still and tense again. It’s Techno’s doing, with him raising his voice, but he’s too thoroughly unsettled by the situation to find himself remorseful. There is a part of him still thoroughly rattled by how close he’d allowed this child to get, this potential hostile; living in his own house and Techno’d never noticed. His breathing starts to feel all right, all the sudden; his fingers clench against his will.

“I need a minute,” Techno grunts, and he doesn’t give Tommy a second glance as he wheels towards the door. Better he let himself ponder things outside, then here under the watchful eyes of the frightened eyes of this half-child. This bird thing with his fearful tremors. 

The day is nearing evening. The sun remains bright in the sky, but dragonflies are beginning to crowd about the fields and the trees on the horizon. Techno hikes out to the edge of the yard and leans against a pile of barrels, absently brushing his thumb across the hilt of his axe as he does. He takes a deep breath in and a deep breath out and steadies himself with the smell of freshly tilled soil.

_ I need Phil, _ Techno realizes. _ I really, really need Phil. _

Phil would know how to handle children. Phil’s had children, befriended children, lived around children. Techno’s only ever seen them in the aftershocks of combat, looking after their parents or siblings or friends; they always have an unhinged look of fear about them. A wide-eyed shakiness. 

Tommy had that look about him. Like he’d spent his life imprisoned in glass houses. Techno knew a thing or two about being trapped in glass houses; once the roof is shattered, all that’s left is freedom and sunlight and knife-shards everywhere you step.

The river winding by the field flashes with a green something. Techno spots it out of the corner of his eye and flinches, reaction moments delayed. When he turns he spots the familiar shine of smooth scales rippling in the water, reflecting the sunlight.

_ Niki’s been wanting to meet you,  _ P hil had said. _ She’s a mer-hybrid.  _

Techno hadn’t cared, at the time, but. Well. Phil.

He needs Phil.

Techno pushes himself off from the barrels and takes a few steps nearer the river. By the time he’s on the bank, he can see clearer the flash of scales catching the sun - even with the mer-hybrid - Niki - below the murky surface and out of view. He crouches, a little, and moves his hand away from his axe-hilt in an attempt to appear friendly.

There’s a swirl of something glittery and Niki’s head pops into view. She’s got pale pink hair and a line of gills down her cheekbones and throat, and her teeth are a little too sharp to be anything near human, but she gives him a friendly smile and a wave regardless.

“Hello, Technoblade,” she chirps. Her voice sounds soft and a little gurgly. “It’s nice to meet you. Phil’s said a lot about you. I’m Niki, I live here.” 

“I also live here,” Techno says, because he’s blanking for a good introduction. “You say you know Phil, yeah?” 

“Oh, Phil’s lovely.” Niki beams at him. “He’s been helping tubbo with his bees, did you hear? They like to buzz around over the lake all day, I sit and watch them sometimes when i’m feeling tired.” 

Techno blinks at her and decides to take that as a yes. “Bees,” he says slowly, and the thought of Phil trying to wrangle a teenager’s herd of insects gives him pause. “Glory be. Alright. Niki, I need you to do me a favor, is that alright?” 

Niki dips under the surface, and for a moment, Techno thinks he’s offended her into leaving. But then she pops back up again and shakes her hair out a little, and he realizes she was just catching her breath. “Of course,” she agrees, smiling. “What do you need?” 

“I need you to fetch Phil for me,” Techno tells her. “Tell him it’s urgent. Tell him it wasn’t a raccoon.” 

Niki frowns a little. She looks confused. 

“He’ll get it,” Techno tells her. “Just make sure he hurries over, alright?” 

Niki smiles again. “Okay, Technoblade, I’ll pass that right along,” she chirps, “Lovely to meet you-” 

And she’s giving him a cheery wave, and a flick of the tail, and just a moment later she’s been entirely swallowed beneath the river-water surface.

Techno breathes a long breath of relief and sits back on his haunches.

Phil is coming. He’ll be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i read all the comments and they bring me joy :)


End file.
